China shows 4 Chinese soldiers killed in bloody confrontation with India

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The two sides fought with fists, stones and bamboo poles with nails, in what was the deadliest border conflict between the two armed neighbors in the last 40 years. New Delhi has previously said that at least 20 Indian soldiers were killed during the fighting in the Galwan Valley area.
On Friday, the official army of the Chinese army, PLA Daily, said that a battalion commander, Chen Hongjun, and three soldiers – Chen Xiangrong, Xiao Siyuan and Wang Zhuoran – died in the “fierce fight” for the defense of the border and received posthumously awards.
A reward was also given to Qi Fabao, the regimental commander of the Xinjiang PLA Military Command, who was seriously injured in the collision, according to the report.

PLA Daily did not disclose the ranks of the soldiers.

Twenty Indian soldiers killed after clash with China along the disputed border
According to the PLA Daily report, “foreign military” troops violated an agreement with China and crossed the border into China to set up tents. The report also claimed that when Qi led several PLA soldiers to negotiate, the Indian side deployed several soldiers in an attempt to force Chinese troops to accept.

China and India have blamed each other for the fight.

An Indian military source previously told CNN that the dispute began over a Chinese tent that was built the night before the clash. Indian troops, according to the source, tore it down. The next day, Chinese soldiers armed with stones and bamboo sticks with whom they returned, the source said, and attacked the unprepared Indian troops. CNN cannot independently confirm this event account.

Disputed border

India and China share a 2,100-mile (3,379-kilometer) border in the Himalayas, which in places is poorly defined and hotly contested. Both sides claim territory from both sides.

The June 2020 collision broke out near Pangong Tso, a lake of strategic importance at about 4,267 meters above sea level, which stretches from Indian territory Ladakh to Chinese-controlled Tibet in the greater Kashmir region, where India, China and Pakistan claim territory.

In 1962, India and China went to war on this remote, inhospitable expanse, eventually establishing the Current Line of Control (LAC), the de facto border that Pangong Tso crosses. However, the two countries do not agree on the exact location of the LAC and both regularly accuse the other of exceeding it or seeking to expand its territory. Since then, they have had a history of mostly non-lethal fighting over the position of the border.

In September, the two countries agreed not to send more troops to the border, following escalating tensions between New Delhi and Beijing. The situation was temporarily resolved, with the two sides participating in several rounds of talks.

New satellite images show that Chinese troops have dismantled camps on the Indian border

But another “minor” confrontation broke out between the two sides in January, according to the Indian military, although it said it was “resolved by local commanders according to established protocols.”

On February 10, the Chinese Ministry of Defense said the two countries began to detach along the southern and northern shores of Pangong Tso after reaching an agreement with India.

According to satellite images, China withdrew troops, dismantled infrastructure and set up camps along the disputed border.

Satellite photos taken on January 30 by Maxar Technologies in the US showed a series of Chinese developments along the Pangong Tso. In the new images taken on Tuesday, dozens of vehicles and construction structures were removed, leaving the field empty.

Brad Lendon, James Griffiths and Jessie Yeung of CNN contributed to the reporting.

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